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Wednesday, August 29, 2018

Here I am with my entry for Scrappy Mo's August Rudolph Days Challenge. I used a couple of different Graphic 45 collections and some wonderful gold glittery bells from my crafty pal, Karen Ladd. (THANKS, Karen!!)

I am here with a card to share with you for a couple of Winnie & Walter challenges:

1. Winnie & Walter Rerun Challenge #33 - Picture Perfect - I don't own the featured rerun set so I took inspiration from the colorful splashy background of Shay's card HERE. My card uses one of my leftover Easter Egg dye watercolor backgrounds that is probably a little too wild for the sedate stamp set I used, but I think I managed to harness it. You can let me know in the comments.

I am here with an encouraging masculine birthday card to share. I had this card partially put together with this background for a long time and didn't know whether to add more things or not. It's a large format card and has lots of room for lots of stuff, but I finally decided for a guy card....keep it simple and let this interesting background using Walnut Ink Crystals take center stage. (These crystals are super-fun to play with...kind of like Brushos or ColorBursts, only chunkier.) So I tied some twine and added the focal panel and said....finished. :) Now that it is done, I am still not sure if I should go back and add something else or not! Ha.

Here's a close up of the focal panel......

"Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart." Jeremiah 1:5

And here's a shot of the fun variations you get with these Walnut Ink Crystals. I stamped over the background also with a MFP Crackle stamp.

I used one of my leftover Easter egg dye backgrounds in blue and pink then stamped and colored over the top of it. Finished off with Wink of Stella for non-stop sparkle!! LOVE!!

I am also entering this card in Power Poppy Creative Confetti Challenge - Use your birthstone color for a card. My BD is in February and my birthstone is an amethyst. So I used purples in my card....which I adore!!!

Hope you enjoyed my card. It was fun to color the flowers using my Chameleon Color Tops. I had experimented around with them but this is my first card using them. I am still getting the hang of the technique. Thank you so much for stopping by today!!!

Couldn't resist posting this adorable picture of "a special mother with stripes". Awwww...

Hi, Friends.....

What I really meant in the title to this blog post was that I made this card for a special mother and that the card has a striped background.....but "for a special mother with stripes" is the first thing that came out! :)

I usually use this stamp for Mother's Day cards, but my dear mother-in-law had an alarming health scare this last week. I wanted to send a pretty mom card to her and thought this would fit the occasion. I love this older DCWV Chateau Lavender stack that I used here.

Hope you like my card and that my mom-in-law will, too. We are all so thankful that she is okay. She's in her mid-80s and needs to start acting her age!!! lol.... <3 <3 <3 Thank you for stopping by today!

I am here with another Graphic 45 card especially for a couple of challenges:

1. UnstampaBelles Challenge - Use embossing with an optional Make it Masculine Twist. I used my Graphic 45 Cityscapes collection again for this masculine card. Emboldened by the one I made HERE, I embossed and tore the cardstock again for a peeling wallpaper effect. At least, that what it reminds me of! :)

Unrelated to cardmaking.....I have good news to report. We have had cool temperatures and rain with no thunderstorms for the last couple of days!! We are so thankful for this gentle change of weather that helps reduce our immediate fire danger. Our nights have been in the low 50s and high 40s, so autumn is certainly on its way. Whew!!! That's always a relief.

Thank you so much for stopping by today. I hope you are all well and safe from all the fire and weather-related problems so many areas are experiencing.

Digging around in my stash, I found these scraps of DCWV 12x12 paper with a really long Merry Christmas and just had to use them for long format cards. Can you tell that I did some sparkly tone-on-tone embossing on the backgrounds??? For the first card I used a W&W stencil and on the second one I stamped some W&W stars. I scattered glittery stars and snowflakes here and there......made from scraps, of course! Bonus: I kept these very flat for easy mailing. Yay!!

I couldn't decide which color of card base to use, lavender or hot pink, so I made one of each. Which do you like better? I like the pink one.

Again, I pulled out one of my Graphic 45 collections.....this time it's their "A Place in Time". Isn't the bored expression on the young would-be scholar's face priceless?!! I can just imagine this lad wishing he were anywhere besides back in school again. lol....

Le Chat de Grumpy(My best guess at French....which is only because I have a Le Chat coffee mug that I use all the time. But oui internet travelers have to pick things up wherever oui can! Ha.)

Hi, Friends......

I am here with a masculine card to share today. I made this card especially for a couple of different challenges:

1. UnstampaBelles Challenge - Susan, the lovely hostess from the underside of the globe, comes up with fabulous challenges where there is no stamping allowed. :) My Graphic 45 collections are always perfect because they have lots of sentiment strips which match their wonderful papers and can be used in lieu of stamping. This month Susan is asking us to include embossing and, as an optional twist, to make it masculine. Out came my G45 Cityscapes collection that I have been pining to use. For some odd reason, I love the look of cityscapes, even though I am a country girl through and through!

2. Winnie & Walter August Color Combo Challenge - This month Heather's challenge is Any Palette Goes. Fun!!! To help me along with my card, I chose a color palette that goes with my Cityscapes collection . I added a few neutrals to my card, too.

Now....before summer is over, let's go to Paris!!!...................

You can't imagine how much courage it took for me to tear this embossed background!! I knew it would tend to tear along the embossed lines....and it did....too much in some places! But I soldiered on and actually like how the tearing turned out. :)

Hope you enjoyed your little sight-seeing trip! Thank you for stopping by today. We made it safely through the thunderstorms the other night. There were no ground strikes in our area and no new fires in our part of Idaho. So thankful for God's protection!

Thursday, August 16, 2018

Drum Kit(ties) - This is what it would look like at my house if I had drums. <3

Hi, Friends......

I am here with a Christmas card to share. I was inspired by the theme over at Christmas Cards All Year Round to make a holiday card with HOT colors. Such a fun theme that I had to try it out. I made one using traditional red earlier this month, but I felt like rising to the challenge and really using HOT colors.

I have been on a Graphic 45 kick lately, so I teamed up a fun 12 Days of Christmas chippie with some DCWV scraps and a Doodlebug doily for my card. I dressed up the doily like a wreath by adding some rhinestones in warm colors. See that fish-tail banner.....oh, how I wish I had some nesting dies in this nice wide shape, but alas...no. I had to cut it out myself...so don't look too closely!

Thank you for stopping by today! I hope you are staying safe in all the heat. We have a fire weather warning for tomorrow with a now updated 40% chance of thunderstorms that is keeping us all on pins and needles. Please keep all those affected by severe weather in your prayers!!

Friday, August 10, 2018

I am here with another entry into Mrs. A's Butterfly Challenge. This time I played around with a glittery gold Dollar Store butterfly and made my tall format card into a tri-fold. (I guess tri-fold is the right name for it. It only has TWO folds, so it seems like it should be bi-fold. But I am sure I have seen these called tri-fold before, though, so who knows? Do you think I over-analyze things????? lol....)I also used some Zva pearl flourishes to give flight to my butterfly. I love these flourishes, but am I the only one who has trouble with the crystals coming off of them while positioning them on the card? These were pearls, instead of crystals, and they all stayed stuck for some odd reason. Ha! But the old wisdom is good: don't ask questions when something actually goes well....just enjoy it!

I love anything sparkly and also love gold against blue. These DCWV scraps of foiled gold and blue seemed perfect for this card. I just hope this color counts close enough to French Blue for Mrs. A's Challenge!

I extended the flourish trails onto the next panel to make a little scene, of sorts. I left the third panel plain for personalizing with a stamp or note. However, I did add some narrow strips trimmed from the other pieces on each side of that third panel to add continuity. (Also to show that I intended to leave it blank....not that I just forgot to do something there! Hey...that COULD happen with me!!!)

Glad they are not REAL spiders! Ugh... My son had to dispatch two big ones that were webbing around in the rafters of my front porch recently. One of them made such a stout web that when I unwittingly brushed against one of its "guy wires", I thought I had bumped a small gauge extension cord!! Imagine my horror when I realized what I had touched and how big its occupant was!! Yeeeeech!!! =:o

Hi, Friends.......

I am here with a pair of butterfly cards to share with you today. Even though bugs and crawlies of all kinds give me the creeps in real life, I love making pretty butterfly cards. Somehow, they are NOT the same thing! lol.... Mrs. A's Butterfly Challenge this time around is open for four weeks, instead of the usual two, so that gives everyone a nice chance to participate.....even me!! :) (It closes Aug.28th at her time of "something o'clock" which means a completely different time to most of the world, so you better just check for yourself...hehehe!)For these two cards, I'm letting some bright pink/fuchsia floral patterned vinyl wall sticker butterflies from the dollar store flutter around in my blue sky (from my pile of watercolor marker refill water backgrounds). I applied my stickers to a large sheet of my background and then die cut the panels for a nice finished stitched look around the edges. (I was so proud of myself for using the rest of this sheet of stickers from my butterfly box...until I was rooting around in there later and found three more unused sheets!! Ha. Another day....another day.....)

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

I am here today to share a fun daisy card I made for the Winnie & Walter Color Challenge for July. I am so glad this monthly challenge had some spill-over days into August because July was a total bust for me as far as crafting!! Heather H. chose this fabulous inspiration photo and palette for us to use. LOVE!!!

I had just the right products to use (Winnie & Walter - In Bloom: Shirley's Blooms) and decided to stamp and heat emboss on vellum and use my Prismacolors on the reverse to color the flowers. I'm not a great colorist and after finishing the images I thought the whole thing looked a little blah. I decided to throw caution to the wind (as is usual in my crafting!) and color some outlines around the images, too. I think it livens it up a lot.

The vellum sheet I used was larger than I needed for the front panel. So after I die cut that piece, I cut a strip from the remainder and glued it on the inside of the card. So pretty!!!

I used a variety of daisy sizes...some solid and some open. The solid flowers provided convenient places to hide the blobs of glue I used for attaching the vellum. Yay!

I really love how this card turned out and I hope you like it, too! Thank you so much for taking time to stop by today and for leaving your kind comments. Stay safe and cool during this terrible heat!!

Sunday, August 5, 2018

I can only guess that someone actually took their cat to sit on Santa's lap and this happened!!!

Hi, Friends.....

Scrappy Mo was enjoying a vacay and delayed her Rudolph Days Challenge for July to the first week of August (thru the 7th, so you still have time to participate!!). I made a Graphic 45 card for this Anything Goes Christmas challenge, using cutaparts from the Place in Time collection. Instant card....I LOVE it!!

Supplies used include:Graphic 45 - Place in Time collectionCore'dinations kraft cardstock and scraps for mats and card baseDCWV scrap for background

Hope you like this super-easy, but nostalgic card. Thank you for stopping by!